native and nonnative number agreement processing across

Native and Nonnative NumberAgreement Processing Across

Structural Distance: An ERP Study

Gwisun Min

Sungkyunkwan University

Introduction

Morphological

Processing

differences between

L1 and L2

Due to shallow processing and influence of age of acquisition (AoA) The Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH)

Due to limitations in general cognitive processing capacity The Declarative/ Procedural (DP) Model

Review of Literature

Can late Korean EFL learners with high proficiency process number feature checking as L1 speakers when there is structural separation between feature checking elements?

YES

The SSH is refuted.

NO

The DP model is refuted.

Review of Literature

Do different structural distances modulate L2 processing?

The SSH

L2 lacks syntactic hierarchies.

The DP Model

L2 processing of hierarchical structures can be as automatized

as L1 processing.

Research Questions

1. Do advanced late Korean EFL learners process ungrammatical number morpheme in simple NP in a nativelike way?

2. Do advanced late Korean EFL learners process ungrammatical number morpheme in partitive NP in a nativelike way?

Method

Participants

Materials

Procedures

Data acquisition and analysis

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Method: Participants

• 9 native speakers

• 16 Korean EFL learners

Method

Participants

Materials

Procedures


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Method: Materials

(1a) Thomas added [QP many{+count} [NP exciting new items{+plural} ]] to the collection.

(1b) Thomas added [QP many{+count} [NP exciting new item{+plural} ]] to the collection.

(1c) Mary donated [QP many{+count} [NP (UNIT){+count} [PP of [DP her [NP

books{+plural} ]]]]] to the library.

(1d) Mary donated [QP many{+count} [NP (UNIT){+count} [PP of [DP her [NP

book{+plural} ]]]]] to the library.

(Adopted from Song, 2015)

Method

Participants

Materials

Procedures


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Method: Procedure

Method

Participants

Materials

Procedures


12

Method: Data acquisition and analysis

• 28 electrodes, referenced online to FCz and offline to both mastoid electrodes

• The impedance threshold value was kept below 10kohm at all sites.

• 8.7% of trials were excluded across all conditions due to artefacts.

• Online filter and sampling: A 0.016 to 250Hz bandpass filter and 1000HZ sampling rate

• Offline filter and sampling: A 0.1 to 30 Hz bandpass filter and downsampled to 200Hz.

• Epochs: -200ms ~ 1000ms

• Time windows: 300-500ms, 500-700ms, and 700-1000ms.

• ANOVAs were performed within each time window separately for midline and lateral sites.

- Midline sites: Grammaticality x Electrodes (Fz, Cz, Pz)

- Lateral sites: Grammaticality x Anteriority (anterior, center, posterior) x Hemisphere

Results

Behavioral results

ERP results

- Native speakers

- Korean EFL learners

- Visual inspection of individual data

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Results: Behavioral results

• Accuracy rates for comprehension questions

t (23) = 1.73, p > 0.05, d = 0.65

• Awareness of syntactic violations

t (23) = 1.51, p > 0.05, d = 0.66

Native speakers Korean EFL learners

94.79% 92.80%

Native speakers Korean EFL learners

46.66% 23.12%

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Results

Behavioral results

ERP results

- Native speakers



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Results: ERP Results

Native Speakers EFL Learners

Simple NP

Partitive NP

Simple NP

Partitive NP

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Results

Behavioral results

ERP results

- Native speakers



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ERP Results: Native speaker group

• Simple NPs • Partitive NPs

- No significant effect of grammaticality appeared.

19200 400 600 800 1000

-5μv

+5μv

_________ Grammatical--------- Ungrammatical

Fz

Cz

Pz

Results

Behavioral results

ERP results

- Native speakers



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ERP Results: EFL learner group

• Simple NPs • Partitive NPs

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Fz

Cz

Pz

200 400 600 800 1000

-5μv

+5μv

_________ Grammatical--------- Ungrammatical

Fz

Cz

Pz

Results

Behavioral results

ERP results

- Native speakers



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Visual inspection of individual data

• Native speakers

• Korean EFL learners

Fz in 500-700ms in partitive NPs Pz in 500-700ms in partitive NPsCz in 500-700ms in partitive NPs

Fz in 300-500ms in simple NPs Pz in 300-500ms in partitive NPs

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Topography of native speakers (n=6) excluding negative-response-dominant individuals in partitive NP condition

Topography of Korean EFL learners (n=16) in simple NP condition

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Discussion

Absence of the P600

Functional nature of sustained anterior negativity (SAN) and early positivity

General discussion

Revisiting research questions

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Discussion: Absence of the P600

Syntactic violation during comprehension task as opposed to GJT, may not elicit the P600.

1. The P600 is task-dependent (Brouwer & Crocker, 2017; Schacht et al., 2014).

2. Elicitation of the P600 depends on parsers’ subjective judgment of grammatical acceptability (Caffarra et al., 2015; Lemhöfer et al., 2014).

3. The P600 may not indicate detection of violations per se but sentence-level reanalysis after detection of linguistic violations (Tanner & van Hell, 2017).

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Discussion

Absence of the P600


General discussion


27

Functional nature of sustained anterior negativity (SAN)

• SAN was often associated with increased demand on working memory (e.g., Boudewyn, Long, Traxler, Lesh, Dave, Mangun, Carter & Swaab, 2015; Fiebach, Schlesewsky, and Friederici, 2002; Meltzer and Braun, 2013).

Not suitably applicable to the current experiment context since ungrammatical condition does not require additional WM in processing.

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• SAN emerged in syntactic violation paradigm studies that involve comprehension question tasks (e.g., Hsu, Tsai, Yang, & Chan, 2014; Jiang, Tan, & Zhou, 2009; Jiang & Zhou, 2009; Ye & Zhou, 2008).

- A sign of automatic second pass semantic reinterpretation (Jiang et al., 2009)

Applicable to the current study. However, SAN in Jiang et al.’s study (2009) and that in the current study may manifest different stages of cognitive processes due to different time windows.

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• SAN may signifies metacognitive, executive control processes that resolve conflicts, i.e., inhibitory processes (Hsu et al., 2014; Ye & Zhou, 2008).

- Inhibitory processes in the current study: comprehension vs. syntactic violation resolution

SAN

Ye & Zhou (2008) The current study

Task-takers with high cognitive control abilities

and low complexity sentence

Native speakers in simpler sentence condition (i.e.,

simple NP)30

Functional nature of early positivity

• Early positivity (300-500ms) in the current study

- The P300? However, it is usually elicited in oddball or memory recall tasks rather than to syntactic violations.

- Other possible interpretations:

1. The effort of integrating quantifiers with mismatching referents (Jiang et al., 2009)

2. A process of detecting or resolving conflict between an expected plurality and actual input of singularity (Ye & Zhou, 2008)

Effortful syntactic processing with attention involved

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Discussion

Absence of the P600


General discussion


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General discussion

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Native Speakers

Simple NPs Partitive NPs

Automatic syntactic violation detection and resolution

Controlled syntactic processing

Automatic syntactic violation detection and resolution

• Individual differences in language processing are reported in other studies (e.g., Tanner & van Hell, 2017; Ye & Zhou, 2008)

- Ye & Zhou (2008): Participants with high cognitive control abilities showed SAN in simple sentences while those with lower abilities showed sustained positivity to the same type of sentences, which is comparable to the current study findings.

Why different ERP patterns across structural

conditions?

Extra cognitive demand required for processing more complex sentences

Individual differences

34

35

Korean EFL Learners

Simple NPs Partitive NPs

Controlled detection/monitoring of syntactic violations

Discussion

Absence of the P600


General discussion


36


• The research questions were as follows:

1. Do advanced late Korean EFL learners process ungrammatical number morpheme in simple NPs in a nativelike way?

2. Do advanced late Korean EFL learners process ungrammatical number morpheme in partitive NPs in a nativelike way?

Late Korean EFL learners showed different ERP patterns from native speakers in both simple NP and partitive NP condition in spite of their high proficiency.

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• This suggests that L2 processing is qualitatively different from L1 processing, in line with the SSH. However, the difference between L1 and L2 processing seems to lie in different degrees of automatization between the two rather than language deficits in L2. For both L1 and L2, the degree of automatization in processing was manipulated by the degree of sentence complexity, indicating that both L1 and L2 processing rely on general cognitive capacities, at least to some extent.

Implications and limitations

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Implications and limitations

• Merit of the current study:

- An ERP study that investigated the effect of structural distance in L2 processing like the current study is scarce.

- With a comprehension task, this study revealed how syntactic violations were processed with parsers’ attention drawn to meaning.

• Limitations:

- Small sample size

- Bilinguals in the native speaker group

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References

Boudewyn, M. A., Long, D. L., Traxler, M. J., Lesh, T. A., Dave, S., Mangun, G. R., Carter, C.S., & Swaab, T. Y. (2015). Sensitivity to referential ambiguity in discourse: the role of attention, working memory, and verbal ability. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(12), 2309-2323.

Brouwer, H., & Crocker, M. W. (2017). On the proper treatment of the N400 and P600 in language comprehension. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 1327.

Caffarra, S., Molinaro, N., Davidson, D., & Carreiras, M. (2015). Second language syntactic processing revealed through event-related potentials: An empirical review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 51, 31-47.

Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2006a). Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied psycholinguistics, 27(1), 3-42.

Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2006b). Continuity and shallow structures in language processing: A reply to our commentators. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27(1), 107-126.

Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2018). Some notes on the shallow structure hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 40(3), 693-706.

Fiebach, C. J., Schlesewsky, M., & Friederici, A. D. (2002). Separating syntactic memory costs and syntactic integration costs during parsing: The processing of German WH-questions. Journal of Memory and Language, 47(2), 250-272.

Jiang, X., Tan, Y., & Zhou, X. (2009). Processing the universal quantifier during sentence comprehension: ERP evidence. Neuropsychologia, 47(8-9), 1799-1815

Jiang, X., & Zhou, X. (2009). Processing different levels of syntactic hierarchy: An ERP study on Chinese. Neuropsychologia, 47(5), 1282-1293.

Lemhöfer, K., Schriefers, H., & Indefrey, P. (2014). Idiosyncratic grammars: Syntactic processing in second language comprehension uses subjective feature representations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 26(7), 1428-1444.

Meltzer, J. A., & Braun, A. R. (2013). P600-like positivity and left anterior negativity responses are elicited by semantic reversibility in nonanomalous sentences. Journal of neurolinguistics, 26(1), 129-148.

Schacht, A., Sommer, W., Shmuilovich, O., Martíenz, P. C., & Martín-Loeches, M. (2014). Differential task effects on N400 and P600 elicited by semantic and syntactic violations. PloS one, 9(3).

Song, Y. (2015). L2 processing of plural inflection in English. Language Learning, 65(2), 233-267.

Tanner, D., Grey, S., & van Hell, J. G. (2017). Dissociating retrieval interference and reanalysis in the P600 during sentence comprehension. Psychophysiology, 54(2), 248-259.

Ullman, M. T. (2001). A neurocognitive perspective on language: The declarative/procedural model. Nature reviews neuroscience, 2(10), 717-726.

Ullman, M. T. (2015). The declarative/procedural model. Theories in second language acquisition: An introduction, 135-158.

Ye, Z., & Zhou, X. (2009). Executive control in language processing. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 33(8), 1168-1177.

THANK YOU

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Contact Information

• Name: Gwisun Min

• Position: Lecturer

• Affiliation: Sungkyunkwan University

• Email: [email protected]

native and nonnative number agreement processing across

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